Dead Walk
by WarriorSwan
Summary: Mulder and Scully find themselves in New Orleans, Louisiana just 24 hours before the start of Mardi Gras to investigate reports of voodoo induced zombification.
1. Chapter 1

Special Agent Dana Scully shivers slightly in the basement office with no heat. Just around the corner, Agent Mulder is unseen, but plainly heard riffling through pages in the filing cabinet marked "X-Files". He curses now and again under his breath, barely audible, but plainly heard in the deathly silence of their subterranean office. Scully reaches out with a deft hand, tightly gripping the remote control to the slide projector, and clicking it off. It doesn't do much good. The image of the rotting corpse, a human arm clutched tightly within its jaws is burned deep within her retinas, as well as her subconscious. It sits in the pit of her stomach and tears at her brain, twisting, morphing, becoming more ghastly than it had been to begin with. The imagination is more disturbing than reality, for only we know what scares us most. She realizes it might have been better to stare at the image of reality than allow her subconscious to twist it into macabre, haunting illusions. A memory that may float up and attach itself to her mind's eye at the most inopportune time.

"Who the hell put this in Z? Did you move things, Scully?" Mulder's voice sounds detached in a way. As if he's not even in the same room as his body.

"I don't even know what you're looking at, or what you're looking for, Mulder. But no, I haven't touched the files."

"Doesn't matter. I found it."

He enters the room, carrying a thick file in his right hand. His tie has been untied, his eyes sag, suggesting lack of sleep. He steps around his desk, and lifts his legs in a large step over a box of papers beside his seat of plush, full leather. He allows himself to fall into the chair, causing it to roll back a foot. He slaps his file down onto his desk in front of Scully, and leans back, shoving his feet up onto the desk, one leg over the other, hands linked behind his head in typical Mulder fashion. He watches her open the file and flip through the pages, an expression of sarcastic wit plays on his features.

"You can't be serious," she says soberly. She glances up at him, biting at her lower lip. He grins.

"Please, tell me you believe in voodoo. We're going to 'Nawlins' just to see it in action. That picture you so kindly removed from the front of the room a moment ago was taken three nights ago in a bar on the Louisiana waterfront. There have been several reports of walking dead, but no hard evidence until that very picture. The owner of the aforementioned establishment, a miss Kathy Bradley, contacted me that night, and was kind enough to overnight that picture to me."

"Well, that explains this file being in Z."

"Pardon?"

"Zombie?"

Mulder gazes at the ceiling a moment. "That hadn't occurred to me."

"So you mean to tell me, and expect me to believe there are what? Zombies roaming the streets of Louisiana?"

"Voodoo seems to be pretty big in 'Nawlins'."

"Mulder, what the hell? Stop saying it like that."

"Hey, I'm just trying to get us in the Cajun mood. I could go for some good old fashioned Cajun cooking. Plenty of shrimp."

"I'm more inclined to believe in cannibalism before zombification."

"Well, believe. You know you want to." He smiles that smart-ass smile he always likes to throw in her face as he points to his flying saucer poster on the wall behind him, with the words 'I Want to Believe' in bold, black letters on the bottom half. He stands up and grabs his jacket on the way out the door.

"Nine-thirty tomorrow morning. I'll meet you at the airport. The plane leaves at one. Get some rest, Scully. You'll need it. It's the Sunday before Mardi Gras." Before she can even think of a rebuttal, he's out the door, and halfway up the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

Washington Dulles Airport

Washington, D.C.

February 18th, 1996 10:17 AM

Mulder sits at the bar alone, several empty glasses in front of him. "Mulder, you're drunk." He turns to find Scully standing just behind him, obviously not amused.

"Good morning, Scully." His smile has a slightly sarcastic tone behind it. She seats herself on a stool beside him. The bartender looks at her expectantly. "I'll have a root beer," she says with a polite, but non genuine smile.

"Mulder, you do realize how difficult it will be traveling through the city tonight, and especially tomorrow."

"Shouldn't you be more worried about what would happen in those crowds if the living dead should get a whiff of that buffet?"

"Are you always this morbid in the morning, or is it the alcohol?" The bartender sets her glass in front of her; she nods to him.

"A bit of both. Think about it, Scully. If there was i one /i , there has to be more, right?"

"Mulder, we don't even know for sure there was one."

"But assuming there was... there must be more."

"There could be."

"Let's assume that it is Voodoo. Let's say there's more than one party involved. How many could there be? An Army? A few?"

"There's no way to tell."

"And what of the theory of a zombie bite resulting in instant zombification of another?"

"Come on, Mulder, you're not putting stock in old horror movies."

"But what if, Scully? All it takes is one. One zombie on Bourbon Street tomorrow night could, in fact, create a zombie holocaust. Within weeks, our entire country could be obliterated, leaving only a few small groups. We would have to live in hiding, forage for dwindling supplies. Live like cavemen. If, and only if, there are any of us when the zombies eventually die of starvation, society would start at the beginning. A second Genesis."

She quickly grabs the half-empty glass of whiskey in front of Mulder, and empties it in one gulp. She smiles at him and nonchalantly places it back down in front of him. When he turns to order another, facing away from her, she allows her true face of burning pain and distaste to show through, then quickly guzzles half her root beer. Her insides burn fiercely. A great heat travels from the back of her throat, down her chest as if she had swallowed a space heater that had gotten lodged halfway to the stomach; she feels as though a hole may be burned in her stomach at any minute, spilling out everything she had ever eaten in her life, her intestines following... or she may vomit, whichever comes first.

Scully gazes out the window as the plane begins to taxi its way onto the tarmac. Mulder sits beside her, half asleep in his seat. "Relax, Scully, the flight's not too long." A light sound, then he pilot's voice. "We'll be taking off in a few moments, everyone should fasten their seat-belts now. We'll be traveling at 32,000 feet, and will arrive in New Orleans at Louis Armstrong International at approximately 2:55 PM." She could feel the plane rock as the engines started. The dull whine worked its way up into a high-pitched screaming sound. Inside, she could only barely hear it.

Moments later, the plane reaches take-off speed. The pressure forces her back in her seat, holding her in. To hell with seat-belts. Who needs them? Once they reach the target altitude, the plane levels out, floating serenely among the clouds.

"Mardi Gras and Girls Gone Wild, here we come," Mulder says.


End file.
